Securement of belts or webbings, for safety related reasons, often calls for attention to prevention of accidental release of the securement. For example, divers' weight belt assemblies utilize a well known type of buckle which includes a single pivotable lever arm attached to a buckle body, the lever arm clamping the belt received at the buckle body to hold the belt thereat until release by the user. The buckle is necessarily of simple design in consideration of the manual dexterity often lost when diving due to a variety of physical factors.
However, such buckles are prone to accidental release by snagging or the like because only a single movement of the lever arm is required to release the buckle and thus the belt. Such unintended release causes an immediate increase in diver buoyancy due to loss of weight and thus can result in unexpected or increased rate of assent of the diver, a potentially dangerous and life threatening event.
A wide variety of securements for belts and webbings have been heretofore known and or utilized, some including buckles having a clamping-type arrangement (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,397,432). Such securements have included safety release buckles which, in association with a particularized structure fastened to an end of a belt or webbing, require movement of two release mechanisms to allow release of the particularized structure at the end of the belt or webbing from the buckle (see U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,201,840, 4,675,956, 2,941,272 and 3,593,388).
However, many such heretofore known buckles for belts or webbings have either not addressed the problem of accidental release, or have addressed the problem by complex and cumbersome means, most often requiring alteration or addition of particularized structure to the end of the belt or webbing to be secured. Moreover, such heretofore known means for addressing the problem of accidental belt or webbing release have usually required the user to maintain reasonably unencumbered manual dexterity to operate the buckle.
It has been found that a belt assembly having two belts can often be useful in some applications. In such a case, it would be more functionally economical to have a single buckle capable of holding all four ends of the belt or webbing and/or selectively releasing the ends. For example, a diver might need to utilize two weight bearing belts so that, in cases of controlled assent or the like, part of the weight could be dropped and part kept during different portions of a dive. A single buckle adapted for such purposes, or for application in other cases where independently releasable belts or webbings in an assembly is desired, could be utilized.